


Brachypelma smithi

by Dusty_Forgotten



Series: Arachnophobia [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bugs & Insects, Corpses, Crime Drama, Crime Scenes, Forensics, Giant Spiders, M/M, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 22:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8344813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: Friday, October Twenty-First: Insects
The pencil-pusher kicked his office chair around to face Kylo, cradling the spider protectively in one hand. It was actually larger than his hand. “I raised that thing.” With one finger, he actually pet it. “This is Millicent. She’s a brachypelma smithi, I’ve had her for fifteen years, and she kicks up at anyone who isn’t me, so back off.”He held the spider out to Kylo, who dropped his autopsy report when he screamed.





	

The first time Kylo saw him, he hadn’t noticed the pen in his left hand, how straight he sat, or that the late-morning sun made him look blonde. Kylo had been too preoccupied with the massive fucking spider on his shoulder.

“Don’t move,” Kylo advised with a hand on the uninhabited shoulder.

Blinking up at him, “What in hell—” he’d started, then gasped upon following Kylo’s gaze to his other shoulder. “Don’t you touch Millie!” He put one hand flat for the tarantula to crawl onto, the other nudging it that way.

Kylo, rolled autopsy report in hand, tore his eyes from the hairy monstrosity long enough to balk at the man holding it. “You _named_ that thing?”

The pencil-pusher kicked his office chair around to face Kylo, cradling the spider protectively in one hand. It was actually larger than his hand. “I raised that _thing._ ” With one finger, he actually pet it. “This is Millicent. She’s a brachypelma smithi, I’ve had her for fifteen years, and she kicks up at anyone who isn’t me, so back off.”

He held the spider out to Kylo, who dropped his papers when he screamed.

  
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The body is facedown, all appendages in place and fully clothed, so it’s pretty damn tolerable. It’s pretty old, but he’s over the smell.

“Alright, where’s the meat?”

Kylo blinks, turning to whoever’s coming up behind him: officers, examiners, photographers, and specialists; the crime scene is swarming, and he only knows CSI. “What is this, a Wendy’s commercial?”

Oh, he knows _this guy._ Redhead (definitely red, now that he sees it under the illumination of every floor and ceiling lamp in the apartment) desk monkey, with the spider. Kylo can’t help but frown; the scene was secured hours ago. “Who let you in here?”

Redhead’s currently pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Are you Investigator Ren?”

“Yeah, and you are?”

“Hux. I’m the forensic entomologist you requested.”

Kylo keeps his arms crossed, standing between Hux whatever-he-is and the body. “The what?”

Hux takes about two steps forward, gets right up in Kylo’s face— and he can, tall as he is— and very slowly says, “I’m your bug guy.”

Figures. Kylo’s deciding how hard to lay into this asshole when said asshole peeks over his shoulder and gasps, “I can see the blow flies from here!”

He shoulder-checks Kylo brushing past him, and then he’s kneeling next to an open-eyed cadaver, cooing at the larvae, and Kylo is devoting all his attention to not throwing up.

  
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“There’s something weird about this one,” Kylo swears to the medical examiner. “I’ve seen a dozen drownings, and they never wash up like that.”

“Oh, I know.” Phasma shakes her head, peels off her gloves. “I don’t know enough about hydrology to say for certain, but it is highly unusual.”

“Can you give me any kind of timeframe? Even just a _day?_ ”

“Weather’s too volatile to tell.”

The weather’s too cold, is what it is; he’s in a trench coat and shivering. Kylo sighs, and shuts his eyes.

“You could try an entomologist,” Phasma suggests, unhelpfully. “I did see some larvae, someone with more expertise might be able to tell you when those were laid.”

“No, I know. He’s on his way.” Kylo looks up pitifully. “That guy gives me the creeps.”

Phasma tsks. “Blood and guts and bodily rot, and you’re most concerned with the insects.”

“He brings his pet spider to the office!”

“Well, she’s cold-blooded,” Hux says, and Kylo’s going to be really mad if he plans to keep sneaking up behind him like that, “and sometimes I turn off the heat when I leave the apartment.”

Kylo narrows his eyes; damn him for sounding so reasonable.

Hux’s hair is somehow unmoved by the blustering wind. He holds up a leather-gloved finger. “You hear that?”

Kylo leans into Phasma’s ear and whispers, “If he says “inevitability” I swear to God I’m throwing him in the river.” She makes a snort look like a sneeze.

“Bless you,” Hux starts. “Where are the katydids?”

“The what?”

“Cicadas, crickets, things that go bump in the night?” It _is_ unnaturally quiet, but it’s winter. “I’ll tell you where they are: hibernation. Where I’d like to be, because the only insects active at these temperatures are indoors. Why am I here?”

Kylo looks at Phasma, and thinks about smothering Hux in the riverbank mud. “You said you saw larvae.”

“I did,” she defends, looking to the body, her hands, and then the CSI van, where the spare gloves are. Hux waves her off, taking a pair of tweezers from his coat pocket— it’s a massive wool garment that practically swallows him, and it’s only fifty-two Fahrenheit— and marches imperiously over to the corpse. Kylo hates him almost as much as he envies him.

Hux drags one of the eyelids open by the lashes, and he mutters like he’s trying not to be heard, “That’s strange.”

“That’s what I said.”

Hux doesn’t dignify that with a response. “Detectives tell me he drowned?”

“The detectives are guessing,” Phasma asserts, “I’ll tell you when the autopsy’s done.”

She’ll tell someone when the autopsy’s over; Kylo’s involvement is finished when the crime scene’s closed off. Hux might get called into the morgue for another consultation, but the only time they’ll hear about this case again is from the witness stand.

“This certainly isn’t a suicide, so they’re wrong about that, in the least,” Hux observes.

Kylo wants to agree, but he’s loathe to admit that to Hux. “What makes you think that?”

Hux is very focused for a moment, plucking something out of the ocular cavity with the tweezers, and displays a wriggling larva. “He was dead indoors long enough for these eggs to hatch, so unless he rolled out here…”

“We got a homicide,” Kylo announces. That means more CSI, detectives start talking to witnesses like suspects, and best of all, testifying. Who doesn’t love court summons?

One of the younger investigators opens up an evidence baggie for the larva, which Hux deposits without looking at her. Take it back to the lab, let some intern compare it to pictures in their textbook. Hux wraps the tool in a disposable towel before tucking it away. “Has he been flipped yet?”

“Not until after you’re done with him,” Phasma affirms. “I know you throw a fit when the colony’s disturbed.”

Hux makes a face that could almost be called a smile. “Phasma, you’re a dear.”

It occurs to Kylo that when the medical examiner had said she’d tell _“you”_ after the autopsy, she may have been talking to Hux specifically.

He’s not jealous of the bug guy. He is _not_ jealous of the bug guy. He’s not—

“Well, get on with it, then,” Hux instructs the couple investigators present for what was assumed a suicide. Where does he get off telling them what to do? This is Kylo’s crime scene, _his_ team— no, he’s not _jealous._

“Notepad, if you please.”

This ginger with the weird hobby Kylo’s got to have at least fifty pounds on, standing there with his hand open expectantly, coat reluctantly fluttering in the winter wind and river roaring behind him. Kylo gives him his pad, and uncaps the pen before handing that over, too.

Hux flips to the cardboard back cover, scribbles something, and hands it back. His name and number, in cursive that has no right to be that straight when he’s not even using the lines. Kylo tries to make himself look incredulous, if not exhausted.

“It’s a pain to call up the station just to get my extension, call my extension until the answering machine gives you my cell, because I’m never at the station. Text me an address, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Hux shrugs, far too naturally, twiddles the pen, and tucks it away. “You let me know when that autopsy’s through, won’t you, dear?”

“Yes, fine,” Phasma dismisses. Kylo not sure what makes him angrier: Hux’s presumption, Phasma’s flippancy, or the fact that he cares about any of it.

He decides on Hux later that day, because the bastard took his pen.

  
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Working in CSI, there’s a lot of things that don’t bother Kylo like they would a civilian. The sight of human innards, for example. Trying to focus over distant sobbing. His own mortality.

Bugs, though. Bugs will always give him the creeps.

Furthermore: _Hux_ will always give him the creeps, just by extension.

Sure, he comes when he’s called in those promised twenty minutes or less, but he exerts every effort to make Kylo into an absolute dunce while he’s there, spewing binomial nomenclature and asking rhetorical questions he’s the only one qualified to answer. Kylo graduated the police academy, he has an associate’s in forensics, and he hates himself whenever Hux walks onto a crime scene.

If Hux were a decent person, he’d have the courtesy to suck at his job, so no one would have to put up with his shitty personality. Unfortunately, he’s terrible, with multiple accreditations for breakthrough research in his field, and a fucking master’s degree— that’s right: he introduces himself by his last name so he doesn’t have to tell anyone he’s a doctor. He’s the best entomologist in the state, and if he weren’t so obnoxiously useful, Kylo would have covered up his murder by now.

He’s also the reason there’s a woman not spending the rest of her life wondering.

Never saw a dentist in her life, fingerprints too mangled to pull, and her face even worse off. Dumped on the side of a highway, and of course she’s got DNA, but they had nothing to compare it to. Just another Jane Doe.

Except, apparently, Jane Doe had some interesting insects that weren’t entirely native. Hux managed to trace them to some rural part of Wyoming, where her girlfriend was trying to convince the local PD she hadn’t run away. She’d been kidnapped.

Kylo doesn’t know if they caught her killer— he never does, until he sees them in the defendants’ box— but because of Hux, they’re looking for one.

It’s harder to hate him, knowing that.

  
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 _“Bit busy,”_ Hux picks up, but he answered on the third ring.

Kylo shuts his eyes, trying his best not to look behind him. It’s not pretty. “If I told you to be somewhere, right now, and you knew it was just going to be the two of us, would you come?”

 _“That depends,”_ there’s a rustle on the other end of the line, and Kylo nearly doesn’t notice it over the writhing _rumble_ on his end, _“Am I about to be your next crime scene? Finally snapped, Ren?”_

Hux is usually a pain in the ass, and Kylo is usually equipped to handle it: point him to the corpse and watch him go. Kylo refuses to look at the whatever’s behind him. It’s worse than a corpse. “Are you coming or not?”

There’s a pause. _“Text me the address and find out.”_

Kylo mumbles, “Thank you,” and hangs up.

  
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Kylo’s leaning against the post of his front porch when Hux pulls up, arms crossed and leg bouncing. “Twenty-seven minutes.”

Hux angles the car remote over his shoulder, and the headlights flash once before he pockets his keys. “You live in the fucking boondocks.”

“It’s cheap, it’s quiet, and nobody bothers me. Come on.”

Hux eyes the residence that can’t decide if it’s a house or a cabin as Kylo starts toward one of the trails crossing his property. Hux cocks a brow, but follows. “Quaint little cottage.”

Cottage: that’s between a house and a cabin, isn’t it? Christ, Kylo lives in a _cottage._ “It keeps the rain out.”

“I’m a city boy, don’t misunderstand, but I’ve always been charmed by the countryside.” Hux probably picked his hairstyle off a Google result for _metrosexual._ “Have much of a vermin problem out here?”

And, back to bugs. Kylo scarcely suppresses a shiver, and hopes Hux can’t see it in the dark. “I hate small talk, I know _you_ hate small talk, so how about we cut to the chase?”

Hux scoffs, the thin beam of his phone flashlight sweeping the uneven ground he traverses. Kylo’s used to jogging these paths in the dark. “Fine then. Where in fuck are we going?”

Kylo slows until they’re side-by-side. “You know how I hate bugs?”

“No, Ren, your girlish shriek was no indicator.”

Kylo shoots him a glare, but he’s too focused on the ground. “Well, I was out for a run, and found some bugs I need you to take a look at.”

The blinding beam falls on his face; Kylo stops to shield himself from it. “Insects, Ren?” Hux accuses. “I came all the way out here in the middle of the night for _insects?_ ”

“Yes,” Kylo snaps, batting the phone out of his face, “why else would I call you?”

Hux goes quiet, and Kylo really wishes he could see his face without all the spots in his vision. He shoves his phone in his pocket, along with his hands.

“It’s not much further,” Kylo says, leading the way. He knows the spot from the sound; it’s what got his attention and pulled him from the path in the first place. “You hear that?” he asks.

Hux either considers this, or else he’s brooding. “… I thought the rivers froze over last week.”

“They did,” Kylo agrees, parting the underbrush in the direction of the gurgling. He waves Hux in first, because he really doesn’t need to see this again. “You remember that thing you said, down by the river?”

It’s dark, especially under the trees, but it’s hard to miss the contrast of white on groundcover. “Insects hibernate in the winter…” Hux breathes in disbelief.

“That’s what I thought.” Kylo hangs back, lets Hux approach the mass. “Then what the fuck is _that?_ ”

He’d call it a puddle, if it weren’t so much of a pile, long as he is tall and half as wide, of maggots. Wriggling, disgusting, live, _maggots._ “Not natural, that’s for certain…”

“Shouldn’t those things be frozen?” Kylo asks, hopefully.

Hux circles the mass, in a way that reminds Kylo of the inward spiral he uses for crime scene walkthroughs on his own. “Tackle shops sell frozen maggots as bait; cold doesn’t bother them.” He crouches, end of his coat dusting the ground. Kylo gags. “It kills the adults, and flies mature in under a week. There’s no way this was laid here, not in these temperatures…”

He’s silent again, and Kylo dares to look. Hux holds up his phone’s light in his hand— which Kylo notices is ungloved— while he tilts his head like he’s trying to see it from every angle. “Unless…”

Just when he thought this couldn’t get any more gross, Hux does. He’s a fucking madman, takes his free hand— he’s not wearing _gloves—_ and reaches right in. Kylo coughs so hard, he spews spittle. At least he doesn’t throw up.

“Oh, what’s the worst they’re going to do,” Hux taunts, like Kylo’s the unreasonable one, “take off my hangnail?”

He cough wetly, which acts as a response.

“Think about it: they had to be hatched indoors, and transported here. This was intentional.”

Kylo smacks his fist against a tree he’s currently supporting himself with while doubled over. “What kind of fucker dumps a few gallons of maggots in the fucking forest!?”

Hux shakes off his hand, and flicks a stray maggot from his sleeve. “They’re eating something, to congregate like this. They’re detritivores, you know. They only eat dead flesh.”

Kylo straightens up, slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Hux has turned the light off, but he still has his phone out. “They’re valuable specimens, especially medical grade— which I suspect these to be. Why waste these many larvae on an animal carcass?”

Runs his hands through his hair. Resists the urge to pull it out. “It’s a fucking body, isn’t it?”

Hux struts back over, looking down. “More than likely.”

“I will never stop being surprised by the ways people come up with to get rid of bodies.”

Hux finishes with his phone. “Phasma’s getting the team together.”

He’s not jealous of the medical examiner. Holy fucking shit, he is not jealous of the medical examiner for being friends with a guy that just stuck his hand in a carcass of maggots— which is decidedly not brave, but completely disgusting.

Hux has a really cute smile. “When you asked me to come to your house, alone, in the middle of the night, I never thought I’d claim it as overtime.”

Kylo blinks, and frowns. “Wait… You thought this was a booty call?”

If he’s honest with himself, Kylo thinks the way Hux raises one eyebrow is kind of adorable, when it’s not condescending. “What do you think took me so long?”


End file.
